Nigel Vaz, business transformation lead and executive committee member at Publicis Groupe, and CEO of Publicis.Sapient across EMEA and APAC, has been named president-elect of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), the trade body and professional organization for agencies in the U.K.’s advertising, media and marketing communications industry. He becomes IPA president in March 2019.

He will serve a two-year term during which he will work closely with the director general Paul Bainsfair to evolve and shape the future direction of the IPA and the agency industry more generally. Vaz will be the IPA’s chief spokesman for its membership, and will also chair the meetings of the IPA Council, its governing body. The IPA exists to advance and promote the theory, practice and value of marketing communications, we well as standards of best practice.
 
Bainsfair commented: “I am very much looking forward to working with Nigel to ensure the IPA remains the power behind the practitioners. He is a man who encompasses all the skills we need as an industry and who is already a well-known champion for technology and transformation. We continue to live in interesting times and his perspective on world, as well as local, issues will be invaluable as the IPA carves out its global reputation through its thought leading initiatives, professional qualifications and navigates it way through increasingly complex business issues.”
 
Vaz added: “It is a real honor to be chosen as the next president of the IPA, and I look forward to building on the extraordinary work of my predecessors in championing our industry and its impact in the world. Wherever we look today, we see rapid and fundamental change affecting consumers, economies and culture, clients and our own businesses. The creativity and the technologies that help us to unleash that creativity will be vital to helping navigate that change – and the role and work of the IPA in ensuring we are fit and ready for the opportunity it brings has never been more vital.”